Monday, July 14, 2008

Music: Stalinist-zombies, Gorby the Barbarian, putting the lumps back on the lumpenproletariat, and the spurting Twinkie of freedom!

In the following video, the Russian metal group ANJ (actually, their initials are Cyrillic letters I can't reproduce here, but that seems to be the commonly excepted English translation), a Conan-like Mikhail Gorbachev takes on hordes of Stalinist zombies who threaten the proles, here played by three top-heavy babes. Gorby dispatches these undead hardliners with his bare hands, his axe, a submachine gun, and laser beams that he can shoot from his freakin' eyes.

I don't know what's weirder about this video: the fact that it exists or the fact that is actually a clever and somewhat grim satire. The idea of the Commie hardliners being zombies is not particularly novel, but the band also takes a shot at the bandit capitalism that followed the Soviet collapse and the trashy materialism it has promoted. The "happy ending" is as absurd and strangely unfulfilling, if funny as heck. Like the best satires, there's plenty of folly to go around.

About Me

I have no pets. I own several ties, but rarely have a reason to wear any of them. I sing in the shower but can never remember the words, so I make them up as I go along, and they always end up being songs about showering. I collect slang dictionaries.